A couple of years ago I treated myself to a very tidy Yashicamat that was made in May 1965. I wrote about the camera here. I discovered recently that the shutter speeds had become faulty, finally succumbing to age (57 years) and making the camera unusable. Fortunately Newton Ellis & Co in Liverpool will service TLR’s. They get a full strip down and repair.
Stopping at the local Salvation Army store whenever I find myself in Kenai has become a regular tradition for me. I go there looking for the underappreciated film cameras of years gone by. Typically, I walk away empty-handed but my track record of finding very useable vintage cameras keeps me coming back. On this particular day though, I left with not one, but two 35mm camera bodies complete with lenses. They were both manual focus bodies but they each represented a different generation of cameras.
My better half was recently and suddenly admitted to hospital with a previously unsuspected medical condition. I’m glad to say that she responded to treatment and was discharged after a week with a course of medication and instructions to take it easy for a time.
So while she rested upstairs for a couple of hours in the afternoons I retreated higher up. To the loft, where for some time I have been building a model railway.
I was walking down the shoreline in Margate with Amanda and David, complaining to them after a passing seagull had offended my favourite summer scarf, when David pointed out towards the lighthouse, cutting me off. A procession of yellow-suited and booted sailors were accompanying a boat as it was towed out to the water’s edge.
Sometimes it can seem that by law, photographers in southeast England, with a few days holiday, have to make a pilgrimage to Dungeness. You’re so likely to bump into another photographer it’s very difficult to make images that feel original and I didn’t achieve that here. However, it’s always worth trying, which is how I found myself in, probably, the most COVID-safe environment in this crowded corner of the country on one of the windiest days in early May. Nevertheless, it was refreshing to have a change of scene.
